


The Worst Job in Dunwall

by whalewatch



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Ghost run, Office of the High Overseer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 15:53:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4355099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalewatch/pseuds/whalewatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the plague set in, you joined the City Watch. It's not the best job, but it beats joining the rest of the city in ruin. One night, while patrolling the halls of the High Overseer's office building, you begin to reconsider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Worst Job in Dunwall

"Shall we gather for whiskey and cigars, tonight?" a fellow guardsman hollers at you.  
  
You agree to go with him, as you do every night. You don't mention that he's already asked you three times tonight. You never do. No one ever does. Abrams had always been a bit slow. He'd gotten even slower when the Plague took his sister three weeks ago. But he still had a keen eye and a good aim which was all the City Guard required.  
  
You'd like to quit, you think as you turn the corner and continue your patrol. You used to be a shop-owner, nothing big, just a little general store just outside the center of town. But it was satisfying work, and it fed the family. But when the plague rolled in, no one had any more interest in buying your goods. If they wanted something, they'd loot it, either once your back was turned or after they'd waved a pistol in your face.

Even the City Guard would come in to take your last tins of rations, near the end. You couldn't deal with that kind of competition. When you finally shut down, you joined them. You were fit enough, and they offered to give you elixir and near-enough coin to get more of the life-saving tonic for your family. You have to go to Slackjaw, but at this point, there's not a lot left you wouldn't do. The city was desperate, and so were all its citizens.  
  
When you finish a round of your patrol, you realize that Abrams is not in the hallway. Your eyes narrow. Abrams isn't supposed to leave that hallway until someone relieves him, and you've never known him to be a slacker. You turn off your normal patrol and walk slowly down his hall, checking out the windows for clues. You don't see anything unusual.

You already know something is off tonight. The High Overseer and the Captain Curnow have vanished. You had heard a rumor that Campbell was planning to kill Curnow in some way tonight, likely with the wine he had set up in the meeting chamber earlier that evening. Both glasses, however, sat untouched on the table. You wonder if Curnow is behind the disappearances, but are too afraid to speak up. It could be that this is part of Campbell's plot, though you can't see how. You don't want to ruin it if it is. You aren't paid to be a strategist. You're paid to look intimidating.

The loudspeaker crackles to life. You brace, ready to hear news of where the High Overseer is, or that the building is going into lockdown. It's neither of those two things, and instead the message about the escaped ex-Lord Protector. You feel uneasy thinking about Attano. Another guard and a friend of yours, Andrew Burns, had been at he prison that night. He'd come back in to work to find three other guards sleeping in a pile on top of a crate. That was right before the explosion had shaken the entire building. Not a single guardsman saw him, just the crater he left by the front entrance.

As you pass Esser in the hall, just outside the library, you decide to mention that Abrams is gone. He curses, loudly, then whispers that the overseer who had been patrolling outside the meeting room has disappeared as well. You shudder. Out of the corner of your eye you swear you see Attano lurking outside the window, looking the same as he did when you saw him a year ago at a city-wide festival. By the time you turn your head, the shadow is gone. It was never there, surely. That announcement just has you on edge. You walk over to the window to be sure, but there's still nothing on that ledge save for some bird shit.  
  
You go back to your patrol. You go a little further than normal, going all the way down to the interrogation room, taking over Abrams' route. You peek behind those screens at the end of the hall. You know that a few guards take unsanctioned whiskey breaks back there, or at least they used to. You don't think there's any guards left who can get away with drinking on the job. There's nothing there.  
  
You feel like you are being watched, but you don't see anyone. As you loop through the building for a third time, you realize you have seen literally no one. You peek into the library. There's no one there, though you swear you hear footsteps. You're back in the hallway and you see a man in a hood perched on that room divider. He dematerializes before you can even blink. Impossible. He wasn't there, you decide.  
  
You start to sweat. This is starting to feel like Burns' story about the prison. You don't know where the bodies, your coworkers, would be hidden. You hope they aren't dead. You almost hope that there's more than one person behind this. You do not want to meet anyone who can do this much damage so quickly. You especially do not want to be on his bad side.  
  
You consider sounding the alarm to summon any other guards left in the building, but you don't know what good that will do. You have not seen the infiltrator. You're just scared. You straighten your back and shout to the lurker, trying make yourself feel stronger. It works, for the moment. You keep seeing that hooded man out of the corner of your eye. He whispers with the voice of the Outsider if you get to close, then vanishes.  
  
The door to the interrogation room is closed now, though it had been opened earlier. You come around the corner and find Esser muttering about rats and sheathing his blade. He says he thought he saw someone lurking in the shadows, but they had disappeared. You curse, and start to tell him that you've been seeing the same. Esser curses. There's a soft impact noise and Esser starts to stumble like a drunk.  
  
With a feeling of dread, you glance up to the rafters over the holding chair. You don't have time to register the silhouette crouched just overhead. He has hollow, glassy eyes and then he's gone again. He moves quicker than a whirlwind. You can't track him with your eyes, and his footsteps are all over the place. He's behind Esser, pulling him away. He's behind you. He's above you. He's everywhere and nowhere, all within a quarter of a second. He can't possibly be real. He must be a ghost, then his arm is around your neck and you can't even react quickly enough to struggle.  
  
You wake up on top of Abrams and Esser, the three of you stacked precariously on top of a narrow rafter. When you sit up, Abrams start to slide off and you curse and grab his arm, nearly throwing Esser off in your panic. You shake them both awake so they don't roll accidentally off and break their necks.  
  
When someone goes missing during your patrol around Kaldwin Bridge, you just fucking leave.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't what I usually write, but thought it might be fun. I think about this every time I do a ghost run. Thanks for reading!


End file.
